t St. Eloi in February and had come up in a draft fresh from
hospital and had lain in the supports at the huts all of the Fourth.

The survivors of the front line fire joined those at the huts shortly
after nightfall. They were stupid from shell fire, too dazed to talk.
I saw one man wandering in half circles, talking to himself--and with
a heavy pack on. There were others in worse plight; so there was no
help for him.

Myself, I was too much engrossed in a search for my comrade Woods to
bother with other men less dear, however much I might sympathise with
them.

He and I had been "mates" since Toronto days, had made good cheer
together in the hot August days of mobilisation at Ottawa and had
rubbed mess tins together under the starry sky at Levis before the
great Armada had taken us to English camps and other scenes.

It was he who had fetched me out of danger at St. Eloi. And now it was
my turn. They told me he was somewhere on a stretcher.

I searched them all. I struck matches--and was met by querulous
curses; I knelt by the side of the dying; I inquired of those wounded
who still could walk, but find him I could not. It appears that a new
and heavy moustache had helped to hide him from me. I was in great
distress, but in the fullness of time and when our small circles had
run their route, I discovered him in Toronto.

The word was that we were to go to Vlamertinghe, where the Zeppelins
had bombed us in our huts. It lay well below threatened Ypres.

We of Number One Company passed Belle-waarde Lake, with its old
dug-outs and its smells, and struck off across the fields, the better
to avoid the heavy barrage fire which made all movement of troops
difficult beyond words. We reached the railroad up and down which in
quieter times the battalion had been wont to march to and fro to the
Polygon Wood trenches.

The fire became heavier here and the going was rough so that what with
the burden of packs which seemed to weigh a ton and all other things;
we moved in a mass, as sheep do. When slung rifles jostled packs, good
friends cursed one another both loud and long. This was trench nerves.

Shortly, we ran into a solid wall of barrage fire. The officer
commanding the company halted us. We were for pushing on to that rest
each aching bone and muscle, each tight-stretched and shell-dazed
nerve fairly screamed aloud for. But he was adamant. We cursed him. He
pretended not to hear. This also was trench nerves.

It w